medical attention, have finally been least responsive to the story of
the Cross. In other instances a single visit awakens interest and the
soul goes on into full light and liberty. Several homes I have closely
visited and watched, hoping to find an entrance for Christ; but not
until some serious illness or other calamity comes are its occupants
sufficiently friendly to hear of God's love in Christ. The lady worker
and constant visitor in her long white native garment (silham), with
veiled face is much safer, humanly speaking, and usually more
acceptable than the foreign worker in European dress. I have even been
asked to climb over the roofs into a house within some sacred precincts,
where infidel foot may not be known to tread, and one patient was always
reached through the stable door, as the main entrance was too near a
so-called saint's place. Again I was asked to see and treat a poor
sufferer, very ill, in the open street, to avoid standing on their holy
ground and defiling the spot.
Probably all I have written is equally true of any Moslem land. The
religion of Islam knows no progress and has within itself only the
elements of decay. Means for the propagation of the Gospel will scarcely
vary. The harem always depends upon the consecrated and tactful sister
to reach its inmates from without. These thousands of homes can only be
entered by the multiplication of the individual worker a hundredfold.
Now is Morocco's day. A few days later and her opportunity will have
passed by forever. Once broken up, or Europeanized in any way, and
civilized nations will, perhaps, "fear the propaganda of the Cross and
the distribution of the Bible lest fanatics be aroused, holy war
proclaimed and bloodshed ensue." At least thus they said when Khartoum
was opened to the merchant, and similarly have thought other nations in
their respective colonies. They have not yet learned that the converted
Moslem is the only one who can be trusted, and the men will largely be
influenced by what their mothers and wives are in the home. They know
not as we do, that, in time of war, unrest, and danger, valuables and
money are brought to the missionary for keeping, and the place of safety
to the native mind is the mission house. To meet, in any degree,
existing needs, or use present opportunities for freely distributing and
reading the Gospel, teaching its precepts and hastening Christ's Kingdom
in "Sun-set land," we must strongly re-enforce every station. Increase
the number of missionaries working under each mission. Send forth women
who have learned how to pray in the home lands to seek these poor sheep
and gather them into the one fold and unto the one Shepherd. The
commencement of this year's unprecedented blessing among women dates
back primarily and supremely to the increased spirit of prayer. At first
even all the foreign workers were hardly alive to this, but persistent
prayer won them one by one. Then followed the united requests for
individual souls, and these too were granted. The Holy Spirit brought us
in contact with those hearts within which He was already working, or
preparing to work, and as a result the Father was glorified in the
Son--souls were saved, and not alone among the angels, but even upon
earth and amid the Church militant.
These babes in Christ need daily tending and teaching as little
children. The work in the hands of those workers already in the field
can scarcely allow any addition, and yet we PRAYED for these; and now
who shall feed them? Not only so, some are still halting between two
opinions, reading the Word and needing the loving hand to lead them
gently over the line; but this individual care is a big task where
women's medical mornings each already bring one hundred and twenty to
one hundred and fifty patients. Surely we shall unite in the prayer to
the Lord of the Harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest
and to some--as we pray--He will answer, "Go ye!"
VIII
MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN IN THE CENTRAL SOUDAN
The form of Islam seen in the large centres of population in the Hausa
States is that of a virile, aggressive force, in no sense effete or
corrupted by the surrounding paganism. It has had no rival systems such
as Hinduism or Buddhism to compete with, and until now has not come into
conflict with Christianity. The distinctive characteristics of the
African have, however, tended to increase in it sensualism and a laxity
of morals, and this has stamped, to a large extent, the attitude
_toward_ women and the character _of_ women as developed under its
system.
Social and moral evils, which may have a thin cloak thrown over them in
the East as well as in those lands of Islam in the North of Africa, are
open, and boldly uncovered, in the Hausa States.
Most of what is written in this chapter refers to the Hausa women, who
form by far the greatest number in this country; but it is necessary to
write a few lines first about the Fulani women, who are aliens and of a
different social, political, and racial type.
It is now generally acknowledged that these people--Fulanis--originally
came from Asia, or at least are Semitic.
They are the rulers of all this great empire, and have for a hundred
years exercised a tyrannical rule over the Hausas and the pagan peoples
whom they had succeeded in enslaving before British rule in turn
overcame them. The Fulani women are many of them olive-colored; some are
beautiful and all have the small features, thin lips, straight nose, and
long straight hair associated with the Asiatic. The Fulani rulers,
following the Eastern fashion, have large harems and keep their women
very secluded.
The late Emir of Zaria was terribly severe to all his people, and cruel
to a degree with any of his wives who transgressed in any way or were
suspected of unfaithfulness. In one instance in which a female slave had
assisted one of his wives to escape, both being detected, the wife was
immediately decapitated and the slave given the head in an open calabash
and ordered by the Emir to fan the flies off it until next night!
I have been admitted into the home of one such family, the home of one
of the highest born of all the Fulani chiefs, saw two of the wives and
bowed to them, but the two little girls of seven and eight years came to
call on me. On the whole I was struck with the cheerful appearance of
the wife and the sweetness of the two little girls, but the husband was
a particularly nice man, I should _think_ a kind husband, and I _know_ a
kind father.
I knew one other Fulani lady long after the death of her husband, she
being about sixty-five years of age, and a very nice woman in many ways.
She told me that her husband, although of good family, had married only
her and that they had been happily married for over thirty years when he
died, and she had remained a widow. I fear, however, these are
exceptional cases and that the ordinary life of the women of the ruling
Fulani class is a hard one.
I was once sitting in my compound when a well-covered and veiled woman
came to see me, with the excuse that she wanted medicine. After some
conversation I found it was trouble that had brought her. She had been
for some years loved by her husband but had had no children; so her
husband had married another wife and disliked her now, and she wanted
medicine from me to make him love her again! She begged me never to
mention that she had come to me, saying that her husband would certainly
beat her nearly to death if he knew that she had come out, and much more
so if he knew she had come to me.
The ease with which all Hausa women, but specially those of the middle
and lower classes, can obtain divorce for almost any reason; also the
frequency with which they can obtain redress for cruelty from their
husbands in the native courts, gives them power and a position in the
community not to be despised. A man, for instance, in order to get a
girl of sixteen years in marriage will pay her parents a sum of perhaps
ten or twelve pounds. If at any future time she desires to leave him and
marry another man, she can do so by swearing before the native courts
that they have quarrelled and that she no longer wishes to live with
him. But if that is all she merely gets a paper of divorce and either
herself or her next husband has to refund to the aggrieved former
husband the sum originally paid for her. If, however, she can prove
violence or injury from her husband she has not to pay him anything, but
may even in some cases get damages.
A girl is usually given the option of refusing the man whom her parents
have arranged for her to marry. This is not often done, but I have known
of some cases in which the girl has availed herself of the privilege,
and stated that she prefers some one else, in which case the engagement
is broken and the new marriage arranged at once with the man of her
choice.
In the villages, and among the lower classes in the cities, girls are
not usually married until they are about sixteen. Frequently, however,
among the higher and wealthier classes the engagement is made by the
parents when she is much younger, perhaps eleven or twelve, and she is
after that confined with some strictness to the house or else carefully
watched.
There is a very vicious and terribly degrading habit amongst the Hausas,
which is known as "Tsaranchi." One cannot give in a word an English
equivalent and one does not desire to describe its meaning. It has the
effect of demoralizing most of the young girls and making it almost
certain that very few girls of even eleven or twelve have retained any
feelings of decency and virtue.
In this the girls are deliberately the tempters, and many boys and young
men are led into sin who would not have sought it. Here one must not
blame the women or the girls, for the original sin is with the men, who,
through the terribly degrading system of polygamy and slave concubinage,
have introduced since centuries that which destroys the purity of the
home, and makes it impossible for the children to grow up clean-minded.
It is a sad fact that the evil effect of this seems to have acted more
on the women and children than on the men.
One feels sorely for the boys brought up in this land without a glimpse
of purity in true home life; with never a notion of a woman being the
most holy and chaste and beautiful of all God's creation, and never
seeing even the beauty of girlhood purity.
One is glad to see that among many of the men there is a growing feeling
that they have lost much in this way; and often in talking to men on the
subject of women and their naturally depraved condition, I have shown
them how, where women are given the place God meant them to have in the
home and in the social and religious life of a people, their character
is always the most regenerating thing in the life of a nation, and that
it is useless for them to wish their women to be different when they do
everything to prevent the possibility. With the boys in my own compound
and under my own care I am bound to forbid all intercourse with girls
because of their evil minds and influence. Of course such a thing is
fearfully unnatural and cuts off from a boy's life all those influences
which we in Christian lands consider so much tend to strengthen and
deepen and soften his character.
It is easy to see from the above the reason why amongst those who are
careful to preserve a semblance of chastity, the girls are carefully
secluded from a tender age and not allowed outside their compounds
except under exceptional circumstances, until the time that they are
about to be taken to the house of the man to whom they have been
betrothed.
This preservation of virtue by force, points to the fact that there is
no public opinion; no love of purity for its own sake; no real and vital
principle in Islam which tends to preserve and build up purity.
A mere lad, the viciousness of whose first wife had led him quickly to
take a second, said to me when protested with for doing it, "Our women
are not like yours, and you can never tell what it all means to us. Even
if we wanted to be good they would hinder us."
The existence of a large class of pagan slave girls, who have been
caught and brought from their own homes and carried into the Hausa
country to become members of the harem of some of the Hausas, also
complicates and intensifies the evil; for this mixture only tends to
lower the standards and make the facilities for sin tenfold easier.
It is not true in the Central Soudan, as is so often stated, that
polygamy tends to diminish the greater evils of common adultery and
prostitution. These are very frequent, and it is perfectly true what man
after man has sadly told me, that no one trusts even his own brother in
the case of married relationships. I am bound to acknowledge, however,
in honesty, that these evils are intensified in the cantonments with
their large number of native soldiers of loose character, and some even
of one's own immoral countrymen.
I have seen very little systematic cruelty towards women or children,
except of course in the slave-raiding and slave markets which are now
happily abolished. Women are able to take care of themselves and
certainly do, so far as I have seen.
The knowledge that a wife may leave at will, that less labor can be got
out of a cruelly-treated slave wife, and that little girls can leave
home and find a place elsewhere, all have tended to make women's lives
freer, and to some extent less hard in the Central Soudan than in North
Africa.
On the other hand, one is struck with the apparent lack of love, and
forced to the conclusion that a woman is not in any sense, to a man of
the Hausa race, more than a necessary convenience; a woman to look
after his house, have children, and prepare his meals. In old age she is
often abandoned or driven away, or becomes a mere drudge. This is often
the case also with a man, if not wealthy; when old his wives will leave
him, and many a case I have seen of such desolation. Of real love which
triumphs over circumstances of poverty and sickness there is but little;
women will leave their husbands when through misfortune they have lost
their wealth, and go and marry another, returning later when fortune has
again favored the original husband and frowned on the later one.
I met one beautiful exception to this. One of the most beautiful girls I
have seen in the Hausa states, with a really good face and one which
anywhere would have been pronounced pretty, brought her blind husband to
me. When married he had been really good to her, and after one year had
lost his sight. For four years she had stuck to him and tended him and
really loved him, taking him from one native doctor to another, and at
last to me. It was touching to see her gentleness to him and the evident
trust of each in the other. I have never seen such another in the Hausa
country. Yet what possibilities of the future!
Very few girls attain the most elementary standard of education. But
some few _do_ and every facility is provided for those who can and will
go farther, and I have known girls, mostly those whose fathers were
_mallams_, who learned to read and write the Koran well, and who were
considered quite proficient; and at least one case I know of a woman
who, because of her wisdom and education, was entrusted with the rule of
two or three cities in her father's Emirate.
The chief occupations of women are the grinding of corn and the
preparation of food for the family, the care of their babies, who are
slung on their backs, the carrying of water from the well or brook, and,
to some extent in the villages, agriculture, though with the exception
of the poor slaves it is rare to see women overworked in the fields.
They are great traders also, and if not young or too attractive looking,
they are allowed to take their flour, their sweetmeats, etc., to the
markets and trade. Then again when the season for all agricultural work
is at an end, and their husbands and brothers start for the west and the
coast places, for the long wearisome journey which takes them to the
places where they sell their rubber, nitre, and other goods, and bring
back salt, woollen and cotton goods, the women go with them, and it is a
most pretty and interesting sight to see the long row of these young
women, in single file, neatly and modestly dressed, with white overalls
and a load of calabashes and cooking utensils neatly packed and carried
on their heads. They often sing as they march, and coming in at the end
of the day's journey, light the fires and prepare the meal for
themselves and their male relatives, while the latter go and gather the
sticks and grass to make a temporary shelter for the night.
[Illustration: GOING TO MARKET. TWO BURDEN BEARERS]
They are tidy, industrious, and lively, and, to any one who did not
understand their language, these women would give the impression of a
charming picture and of many things good and true. But to one who could
hear the conversation, as I often have, the secret of the utter
depravity of all the people is soon learned, and one sees how it is that
none grow up with any idea of purity. The minds of even young children
are vitiated from the earliest age.
I have found many very "religious" women. It must, however, not be
forgotten that the religion of Islam is totally divorced from the
practice of all morals. Women in some numbers attend the weekly midday
service in the mosques, sitting apart and worshipping.
One very handsome woman whom I knew had as a little child been enslaved,
and later married to the Emir of Zaria, and had been the mother or
stepmother of many of the Zaria princes. She was a very religious woman,
was allowed a fair amount of liberty, and was much respected. She not
infrequently attended the services and was much interested. But it is
certain that, with the exception of the use of a certain number of pious
expressions, religion has little hold over the Hausa women, and they can
in no sense be considered to share in the devotions of the men, or to be
companions with the men in those things which are the deepest part of
human nature. Hence with Christians there is the learning of a new
relationship altogether, when the man begins to feel that his wife must
be his companion and helpmeet in things pertaining to all his life and
soul and spirit.
Amongst the very lowest classes, with whom there are less objections to
coming into contact with men, and especially white men, and who in their
suffering have allowed us to minister to them, I have been able to get a
glimpse into the terrible sufferings of the poor women of all the other
classes. In their hours of agony and suffering they can get no
alleviation, no nursing or skill to shorten the hours of weary pain, and
in large numbers they die terrible deaths for the lack of that surgical
help we could so easily render them. I was able once to visit a woman
who seemed to be dying. She was in a terrible condition; the complete
delivery of her child could not be effected, and for two days she had
been in a shocking state. In their despair her people asked me to come,
and within three hours, by surgical knowledge, we were able to put her
right, and finally get her to sleep and complete her cure. But we were
told that many, many died in the condition in which we found her, and
that there was never any thought of calling for help. Many a man who
seemed fairly intelligent, and to whom I have talked almost with
indignation of such things, has answered me: "We do not know what to do;
our women cannot help these cases, for they have no skill, and we would
any of us rather let them die than call a man in to help." And so they
do die. They will not yet trust us, although they fully realize that we
are different from their own religious leaders. Whole realms of thought
have yet to be broken through, whole tracts of life principles and
perverted ideas have to be destroyed, before it will be possible for the
many poor sufferers in this land to get what the love of Christ has
brought within their grasp, but which they are afraid as yet to take.
I have tried to show that there is a bright as well as a sombre side to
this picture; that where there is restraint there is often some
kindness; that with ignorance there is often a desire and a yearning
after better things, and a dull feeling that what _is_, is _not_ best.
Nothing but a radical change in the very fundamental ideas of woman,
even by woman herself, can bring about the regeneration of this land.
Only the restoration of woman to the place gained for her by Christ, and
snatched from her again by the prophet of Islam, can bring true holiness
and life into the homes of Hausa, and bring a new hope and reality into
the lives of the men.
The knowledge and worship of Christ are beginning to do this, and in one
or two homes in North Nigeria already men, who previously thought woman
inferior human beings or superior cattle, and who would have looked upon
it as madness to suggest that a woman should be considered the helpmeet
of the man in all that pertains to this life Godward and manward, are
restoring to their wives and mothers and sisters that dignity. How happy
will be the result when this spirit has spread and all the land has
begun to feel the influence of good and holy women in the home, the
market, the school, and the church.
IX
A STORY FROM EAST AFRICA
Mombasa, though a Mohammedan town, is perhaps scarcely a typical one, as
of late years it has become decidedly cosmopolitan, still in what is
called the "Old Town" Mohammedanism with all its attendant ignorance and
bigotry prevails.
There are women in this part of the mission-field with whom we have
talked and prayed in past years, who seem further off from the Truth and
Light than they were even in those early years of work amongst them.
These are the words of a young girl who, we know, was convinced of the
truth of the Gospel: "Oh, Bibi, if I confess Christ openly I shall be
turned out of my home, I shall have neither food nor clothing, and [with
a shudder] perhaps they will kill me." We knew this was only too true.
She was a beautiful girl with sweet, gentle manners, living in those
days with her sister in a dark, ill-ventilated room which opened on to a
small courtyard where all the rubbish of the house seemed to be thrown,
and where goats, hens, and miserable-looking cats seemed thoroughly at
home amongst the refuse.
Yet, in spite of these surroundings and in spite of her knowledge of all
manner of evil (alas! how early these children learn things which we
would think impossible to teach a little child), in spite of all this
she was pure and good. Now she seems to have no desire at all to hear or
read the Gospel. When we do see her, her manner is always flippant and
worldly. We don't want to give her up, we keep on praying for her, but
there have been so many hardening influences since those early days, and
she never took the definite step of openly confessing Christ. She was
soon married to a man much older than herself who already had a wife;
probably more than one. We suppose he was a higher bidder!
She had one little baby that soon pined away and died. How can women,
brought up as she was, have healthy children? Amongst all the Mohammedan
women I have visited here I have never known one to have more than two
children. The majority have no living child.
I believe the husband was kind to her, but he did not live long, and
very soon she was married again. If she bears no children he will
probably tire of her and leave her. I have been told by one of the women
that if a wife does not cook his food properly he may get a divorce. One
old woman I saw to-day told me that her daughter is now married to her
third husband; the other two left her for some trivial reason. When I
asked, "What will become of her when she is old and perhaps cast off
again?"
"Ah, Bibi!" she said, "what _has_ become of me? I am weak and ill and
old, and yet I have to cook and work for others." This is just what does
happen unless they have a house and property of their own. They become
household drudges to those relations who take them in, and there is
rejoicing at their death.
The rule here is for each man to have four wives, if he can afford it.
The number of concubines is, I believe, unlimited. Here the wives live
each in a separate house. The reason given is: "If we lived together we
should be jealous and quarrel and make our husband miserable."